I Used to Like Dogs...

This past weekend Guy and I went to Santa Fe for a friend's wedding. The day before we left we had Tivo installed. I mention this only because this is a story about two dogs.

We have two dogs: Texas, a dachshund I found 10 years ago wandering a state highway in Waco, Texas, and Trout, a kelpie we adopted from the SPCA three years ago. Texas is a world of dog maladies - epilepsy, discoid lupus (cauing some nasty-ass nails and weird skin funk), a bad back (needing surgery once), and a broken hip I never knew about. Yet he's so easy, relatively speaking. Trout, on the other hand, has been stressful from day one: she barks at any little thing, even if we are home and tell her it's OK; she can't tell the difference between and intruder and a guest, resulting in excessive barking with every person who comes into the house (fun party dog!); she has seperation anxiety; she developed some weird bladder thing where she was peeing daily in the kitchen; she started protest SHITTING in the kitchen; and, oh yeah, she has epilepsy too.

Since Berch was born, life with Trout has become very stressful. Before the baby, I was Trout's biggest champion. Guy would freak out on finding piss in the kitchen, or Trout barking non-stop at someone walking by, and I would be the voice of reason, calming him down, suggestion ways we could learn to live with this lemon of a dog. But then the baby came and Trout lost her ally. Maybe it was because she figured out when I was breast feeding or trying to put the baby to sleep, and thereby essentially unable to run across the house and yell at her over and over again to STOP BARKING. So just as Berch was drifting off to slumberland while feeding, Trout would start maniacally barking at some phantom squirrel she throught she saw outside, leaving me to make a lose-lose decision: let her bark and wake the baby, or yell at her to shut the fuck up, and wake the baby. She also loves to walk right next to me, and often right UNDER me as I try to walk down our somewhat unsafe back stairs. And she doesn't listen to me, only Guy.

On Wednesday, when the Tivo guy came, at first I thought I could leave her in the house and she'd get over the initial spate of non-stop barking. But no, she kept barking and barking, and finally I had to lock her in a room in the basement while the installer worked. As I sat upstairs I could here her alternately barking, scratching at the door, and THROWING herself at the door. This was doubly stressful because it reminded me of a recent night when friends brought their dog over and we also had to lock Trout up because she never managed to chill out with the other dog. Ultimately, our friends left early because it was a drag listening to Trout balefully bark every 3 seconds from the basement room. And as I sat there Wednesday afternoon, listening to her bark/scratch/lunge, I replayed the past few months and years of this dog completely circumscribing our lives. The friends who will no longer watch her because she will piss and shit in your house because she's stressed or pissed of we're not there. The fact that I can't even walk her anymore because she freaks out when you pass another dog and I can't control her lunging and barking while preventing Berch from getting toppled in the ensuing melee. The fact that we can't even camp with her because she barks at all the other people in nearby campgrounds. Oh, and we can't drive with her anymore either, because she doesn't realize that if she jumps from the way-back to the back seat she will step all over Berch and hurt him. So any drive with her means that I am yelling, top volume, "GET IN THE BACK! NO!! GET IN THE BACK! THE BACK!!" he entire ride. And I started to think about how, for now, Berch doesn't understand that we are "yelling" - he actually smiles when Guy or I are are yelling at Trout - but soon we are going to start making him cry and causing psychological harm because we're always yelling at Trout around him.

Then on Thursday, I went to drop her off at the expensive kennel we are reduced to using because she sucks so mightily, and had an incredibly stressful ride to Lafayette, constantly watching the rear view mirror to make sure she didn't hurt Berch by climbing over the seat, constantly screaming at her, visions of the truck flipping over because I was busy trying to keep her in the wayback instead of driving. After arriving I discovered that she was missing vaccinations and they wouldn't take her. After what amounted to a travelling nervous breakdown or me as I drove all over Oaklnad getting her shots, calling other kennels and dogwalkers, crying to Guy and Judy (who said, "I'd love to help you, but we can't have Trout stay with us ever again.") we decided that she needs to go.

It's a weird thing, as a lifelong dog lover, to realize that I have in some way failed this dog. Or maybe the dog has finally beaten me. Even when we were running her day and night, she was a hard dog to deal with. She was tolerable before, but her pissing and shitting in the house kind of threw us both over the edge. Now, we can't have people over because she won't stop barking at them. And I find myself screaming at her all day for either barking or not laying down when I ask her to, or for rushing past and under me, nearly tripping me, as I try to walk down the stairs carrying Berch, despite all the times I tell her to stay at the top until I tell her it's her turn to come down. It has become hard to lover her, and she is the #1 cause of stress and fights in our household these days.

In any case, there is my rant. Not much of a good story, I am afraid. But there it is.